How the GreenLight Fund Fights Poverty in the Bay Area
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Photo: Sundry Photography/shutterstock
The GreenLight Fund is a philanthropic organization with a national footprint but a local focus, and its branches include one in the San Francisco area. The Bay Area’s GreenLight Fund focuses on the many population groups, income gaps and urgent needs that make the region unique.
To help grantseekers get to know this fund better, here are some important things to know about how the GreenLight Fund San Francisco operates.
A renewed focus on poverty
Based in Oakland, GreenLight Fund San Francisco is a poverty-focused organization that prioritizes the needs of local children. With grants usually between $10,000 and $500,000, it considers all nine counties of the Bay Area and the lowest-income people living there.
Recently, GreenLight announced a new $4 million investment to bring social innovations to the area through a new fund called the GreenLight Bay Area Fund II. The fund responds to needs that have arisen due to COVID-19 as the pandemic has exacerbated numerous longstanding challenges. GreenLight Bay Area Fund II is a bit different from what GreenLight has done in the past—it provides rapid-relief funding and multi-year grants to allow grantees greater flexibility.
Local recipients
GreenLight works under the assumption that the best solutions to local problems aren’t always discovered close to home. The organization looks all across the country to see what’s working to address poverty and how those solutions might be applied in Bay Area cities.
In the Bay Area, GreenLight supports EveryoneOn, which connects low-income families to affordable internet service and technology, and Food Connect, which addresses food scarcity with technology. Other local efforts involve helping children get ready to enter school, closing the reading achievement gap and readying students for post-secondary education. Improving education and utilizing technology are common themes. As such, student tutoring and digital skills training efforts often attract GreenLight’s attention.
Who’s behind GreenLight San Francisco?
A wide range of individual donors and charitable institutions support GreenLight’s efforts. Some of the foundations backing GreenLight Bay Area’s new Fund II include the Louis L. Borick Foundation, the Caldwell-Fisher Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Dawson Family Fund, Kalonymus Foundation, Andrew F. and Ann B. Mathieson Fund, Merrill Family Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Perkins Family Foundation, the John Pritzker Family Fund and others.
Corporate funders include Bain Capital, Cargill, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Goodwin Procter LLP, Grammarly, iHeartMedia, Morgan Stanley and US Bank.
Grantseeker resources
GreenLight Fund San Francisco does not typically accept unsolicited grant applications and does not detail an accessible grant application process on its website. However, it is open to general questions and grantseeker contact.
Learn more about GreenLight Fund San Francisco and who to get in touch with for local support by checking out IP’s full profile in our Bay Area and NorCal funding guide.
